English Language and Literature Databases

Broad coverage of Literature and Language subjects

• ABELL - Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature, 1920-
  Contains 880,000 records, covering monographs, periodical articles, critical editions of literary works, book reviews and collections of essays published anywhere in the world from 1920 onwards
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1987- ) (Available through Web of Science)
  Current and retrospective bibliographic information and cited references found in nearly 1,130 of the world's leading arts & humanities journals
• Humanities Full Text (WilsonWeb)
  Full text plus abstracts and bibliographic indexing of the most noted scholarly sources in the humanities
• Humanities International Index (EBSCOhost Web)
  A comprehensive database covering journals, books and other important reference sources in the humanities
• J-STOR (full-text journals online)
• Literature Resource Center (sponsored by the Library Fund of the Indianapolis Foundation)
  Biographical information, overviews, full-text literary criticism and reviews on nearly 130,000 writers in all disciplines, from all time periods and from around the world.
• LitFinder
  Access to more than 135,000 full-text poems, stories, plays and more
• MagillOnLiterature (Online Edition of MasterPlots Complete - EBSCOhost Web)
  The definitive, online source for editorially reviewed critical analyses. This database also includes brief plot summaries of the most studied works in the history of literature.
• MLA (Modern Language Association) Bibliography via Gale Literature Resource Center
  Indexes books, articles and dissertations published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics, providing coverage from 1926 to the present. It includes the MLA Thesaurus and the MLA Directory of Periodicals, which lists detailed information on over 5,500 journals, including over 4,400 indexed in the Bibliography

Linguistics

• LLBA (Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts)
  Theoretical and applied linguistics, psycholinguistics, speech therapy

American Literature

• Early American Fiction 1789-1875
  Full text of more than 700 first editions of American novels and short stories
• Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans 1639-1800
  Books, pamphlets, broadsides and other imprints listed in the renowned bibliography by Charles Evans
• North American Women's Letters and Diaries
  Includes the immediate experiences of 1,325 women and 150,000 pages of diaries and letters
• Wright American Fiction
  A collection of 19th century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875
  

British Literature

• British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
  Includes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women, as revealed in over 100,000 pages of diaries and letters
• Early English Books Online
  Digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700
• Early English Prose Fiction
  More than 200 works from the period 1500–1700, exploring the rich diversity of prose fiction in English in the period preceding the emergence of the realist novel as its dominant form
• Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare
  Contains eleven major editions from the First Folio of 1623 to the Cambridge edition of 1863-6, twenty-eight separate contemporary printings of individual plays and poems, selected apocrypha and related works. In addition it contains more than one hundred adaptations, sequels and burlesques from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the whole of Bell's Acting Edition of Shakespeare's Plays (1774)
• Eighteenth Century Fiction
  96 complete works of English prose from the period 1700–1780 by writers from the British Isles
• Victorian Women Writers Project
  Highly accurate transcriptions of works by British women writers of the 19th century

Poetry

• African American Poetry
  The early history of African American poetry, from the first recorded poem by an African American (Lucy Terry Prince's 'Bars Fight', c.1746) to the major poets of the nineteenth century
• American Poetry
  Over 40,000 poems by more than 200 American poets from the Colonial Period to the early twentieth century
• English Poetry Database
  Contains essentially the complete English poetic canon from the 8th century to the early 20th. Over 160,000 poems by more than 1,250 poets are drawn from nearly 4,500 printed sources
• PoemFinder
  125,000 full-text poems including more than 25,000 copyrighted poems, 800,000 poem citations
• Scottish Women Poets of the Romantic Period
  60 volumes of Romantic Poetry, extensive contemporary critical reviews, as well as material specially written for this database by leading scholars
• Twentieth Century American Poetry
  Includes 50,000 poems drawn from 750 volumes by over 300 poets

Drama

• Asian American Drama
  Contains 252 plays by 42 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more
• Black Drama
  Contains approximately 1200 plays by 201 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more
• English Drama
  More than 3,900 plays in verse and prose tracing the development of drama in English from the medieval mystery cycles to the comedies of Oscar Wilde
• English Verse Drama
  Works acted on or intended for the stage, which are either wholly or predominantly in verse.
• North American Women's Drama
  Contains 1,174 plays by 275 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more

Other Language and Literature Databases

• Book Review Digest
  Indexes reviews of current fiction and non-fiction, and provides review excerpts and over 100,000 full text reviews
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online
  Digital images of every page of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century
• Fiction Catalog
  Information on thousands of works of fiction for adults, either written in or translated into English
• Short Story Index (1984-1999)
  Locate more than 84,000 stories—plus the full text of more than 1,600 stories
• StoryFinder
  Provides thousands of full-text short stories plus explanations, biographies, pictures and more

 If you have any questions, comments, or would like research help, please contact Jaena Hollingsworth, English Librarian.